2016-12-01, 06:36 (This post was last modified: 2019-05-01, 21:05 by Milhouse. Edited 52 times in total.)

Kodi "master" is now based on Leia, or Kodi 18. See this thread for Kodi 17 (Krypton) testbuilds, and this thread for Kodi 19.

Fair Warning

Kodi 18 is currently alpha and there is likely to be a lot of activity in the coming weeks/months. There will be some breakage.

In addition, these are "bleeding edge" builds - they often contain cherry-picked commits that require early testing prior to merging upstream, and which won't be found in regular nightlies until after they have been merged.

Please continue to report issues in this thread, but as I'm often not responsible for bugs and regressions (unless it's build related) don't expect personal replies or for me to file any upstream bug reports on your behalf. The best you can hope for is that the developer responsible is monitoring this thread and responds appropriately. If you want to progress an issue, identify when the issue first appeared as that may help suggest the pull request (PR) responsible, then post a comment on the relevant github PR or - if it's VideoPlayer related, or you don't know which PR is responsible - on trac.kodi.tv.

Bug reports

Please include a debug log with all bug reports as this greatly increases your chances of anyone taking an interest in your issue.

In the case of Kodi crashing use the Upload latest Kodi crash log option.

Bug reports without a suitable log will often be ignored - no debug log, no issue - or at best will take much longer to be investigated.

Skin Usage

By all means use third party skins with these builds (if the skins are compatible), but please do not report problems that cannot be reproduced while using the stock Estuary skin that is included with every build.

If a problem is not reproducible with stock Estuary then it's most likely to be a third-party skin problem, in which case contact the skin maintainer.

Installing

You need a working LibreELEC system in order to install a test build. If you are starting from scratch, use an official LibreELEC disk image to create a USB disk installer and with that a working system on your SSD/HDD. Once you have a working system, install the test build by copying the tar file into your Update folder and reboot.

Feature Requests:
I will not be adding extra add-hoc packages to these builds as that is not their purpose, which is to help test bug fixes and enhancements for existing features/packages/drivers in stock LibreELEC. New functionality may be included for testing purposes if it is considered both beneficial and highly likely to be merged upstream in the near future, and is available as a github pull request or commit.

I have no desire to create builds with unique features upon which someone becomes dependent, as this benefits nobody in the long term not even those using the unique features once I stop creating new builds. In theory, when I stop creating new builds you should all be able to seamlessly switch back to official LibreELEC builds which by then should be including most if not all of the enhancements originally tested in these builds.

If you care about long term support for your favourite package, feature or driver and want to see it included in a LibreELEC build, contact the LibreELEC developers on github or post on the LibreELEC.tv forum requesting the addition of support in the base LibreELEC build (or better yet, create a Pull Request with patch). That way everyone building or using a LibreELEC derived system "wins".Additional Testing Notes:

Build references

When reporting issues, refer to builds using only the published build codes, ie. #0215, #0216 etc. The build code is visible on the boot screen, and by typing "lsb_release".

Do NOT use any other reference, as these are often meaningless. For instance, the LibreELEC github revision identifier, 20272, 20281 etc. can be used by more than one build if nothing changes in LibreELEC between successive builds meaning such references could identify multiple builds, rendering it useless as a unique reference.

Anyone using the wrong reference will be ignored by me, possibly others, as I'm just not interested in working out which build you may or may not be referring to.

Usage information

Starting with build #0529(2014), very limited usage information will be collected during the first boot of each newly installed build. The information collected is: build# and build type (Generic). No IP or personal information is collected!

If you wish to opt out of data collection, run the following command:

Code:

touch /storage/.config/milhouse.dnt

The purpose of this data collection is really just to get an idea of how much testing is being carried out and on what hardware, and would otherwise be achieved via non-opt out server logs if such logs were available (which they're not).

(Intentionally left blank)

Builds since early Dec 2014 include crashlog support

In the event of a crash, the file /storage/.kodi/temp/kodi_crashlog_<ccyymmddhhmmss>.log will be created. The symbolic link "/storage/.kodi/temp/kodi_crash.log" will always point to the latest crashlog. Upload one of these files to a paste site and post details on the forum.

Debug builds are occasionally uploaded to the debug folder. Debug builds will usually include more detailed crashlog information, but require a larger System partition (at least 384MB) and more RAM.

The default FAT partitition created by a disk-image installation (prior to OpenELEC 6.0.1) is too small for a debug-enabled build (and even some of the more experimental non-debug builds depending on what features are included), and will need to be increased in size to 512MB using some of the free space allocated to the second ext4 partition.

To resize the FAT and ext4 partitions of an existing installation:

Linux: use gparted to resize FAT/ext4 partitions

Windows: use MiniTool Partition Wizard. See this post for more details - unfortunately partition move/resize is not supported by MiniTool for ext4 filesystems so backup, delete/recreate ext4, then restore to resize the Storage partition

Windows: An alternative solution is to boot a Linux "LiveCD" and then use gparted

Starting with OpenELEC 6.0.1 (and all LE release) disk image installations will now create a 512MB FAT partition although this will wipe all existing data - use the backup/restore procedure to save existing data.

Amazon Prime / Netflix / inputstream.adaptive
Amazon is working working (as of 03 July 2017)
Netflix is currently working (as of 29 Jun 2017)

These builds include the inputstream.adaptive addon, which is enabled by default.

With inputstream.adaptive it is possible to view Netflix and Amazon Prime content.

If the Amazon addons do not support the Inputstream Helper addon then you may have to install libwidevine manually - this is an unsupported method, contact the Amazon addon maintainers if it doesn't work:

Code:

curl -Ls http://nmacleod.com/public/libreelec/getwidevine.sh | bash

Netflix addon (valid Netflix account required):

The Netflix addon with Inputstream Helper can be installed from the Kodinerds Netflix repository - once the repository is installed you can install the Netflix addon, and when a video is watched if the libwidevine library needs to be installed you will be prompted to do so.

Clean builds - what are they?
There are two ways to build LE: a "clean" build, where everything (every package) is built from scratch - this takes 2.5 to 3 hours - or there's an "incremental" build where only the packages that have changed from the last build are re-built - this is much quicker, usually 10-15 minutes depending on the number of packages that have changed.

Obviously "incremental" builds are the preferred method since they're so much quicker, however there are consequences when packages have inter-dependencies and only some of those packages are changed (and thus rebuilt) which may result in unpredictable results at run-time. For this reason, every now and again it's a good idea to "clean build". Also, when there are a large number of core packages being updated/bumped it's also a good idea to "clean build" since the likelihood/risk of inter-dependency is so much greater.

I'll sometimes make a point of mentioning in the build highlights when a build is of the "clean build" variety, mainly so that I remember this if/when I come back to this build for any reason in another 6 months time... Note that I won't always do this as I'll sometimes forget to mention it, so the lack of any reference to "clean build" should not be taken as confirmation that the build is incremental.

Uploading debug logs
Without a debug log there's often no way to investigate a problem, and you can expect your bug report to be ignored as a result. This is the easiest way to upload a debug log:

Enable debug logging. If this is not possible in the GUI (because Kodi is crashing) then add the following to /storage/.kodi/userdata/advancedsettings.xml:

Code:

<advancedsettings>
<loglevel>1</loglevel>
</advancedsettings>

Reboot, so that debug logging is in effect from the very start of Kodi

(2016-12-01, 09:41)atoulmin Wrote: I've just done a fresh install using the USB-Creator and then updating to this build. However I can't see chromium in the program add on list. It's not there. Any ideas?

I suspect you'll need to wait for the 8.1 repository to be updated in a few days. You could try going back to #1115 and seeing if that will allow you to install Chromium from the 8.0 repository, but you may experience issues when upgrading to these later gcc-6.2 based builds (hence why the add-on repository version had to be bumped).

Quick Links

About Kodi

Kodi is a free and open source media player application developed by the XBMC Foundation, a non-profit technology consortium.

Kodi is available for multiple operating-systems and hardware platforms, featuring a 10-foot user interface for use with televisions and remote controls. It allows users to play and view most videos, music, podcasts, and other digital media files from local and network storage media and the internet.